Well, we're little more than a week away from Samsung's Galaxy S IV Unpacked event in New York. You know what that means: rumors, leaks, and the like are all starting to pour in like mad. This go around we're seeing supposed screenshots from the U.S. version of the GSIV, which showed up on GSM.Israel.co.il. Sure, it's a curious place for a U.S. device to make its debut, but the shots are convincing nonetheless.

As you can see, this confirms a few things right out of the gate: a 5-inch 1080p display and 1.8GHz quad-core chip. Past that, all other pertinent information has been blurred, so at least next week still holds some surprises. For now.

Aside from these few hardware specs, we also get a quick look at Nature UX 2.0, which offers a tabbed settings menu. Confirmation of a couple new Smart features are also along for the ride, such as the previously suggested Smart Scroll and Smart Pause.

Finally, a peek at the camera settings shows off the device's 13MP rear shooter. Not much more to say about that – it's more megapixels than before. Kind of expected, right?

While these shots are rather convincing and we've no real reason to think they're not completely legit, this is still a leak. That means it could be completely bogus; as such, take it with a grain of salt until we get official confirmation from Samsung on March 14th. Not too much longer.

Comments

It's the first post of the day and I haven't had breakfast or caffeine. :P Fixed.

Danny Holyoake

Good to know Samsung is continuing with the 'Ugly' theme.

http://www.thepixelpuse.com/ Aj Meadows

I'll never understand how anyone at Samsung actually thinks any of this looks good.

hot_spare

Maybe because it sells? rather because TW-themed phones are highest selling phones in the world? Sales, rather than anything else decides the features in a product.

There is a reason why no company does a market survey in XDA.

Being in Android-land is good because people like you can get a Nexus. But to question a company decision which is literally making 6 billion profit a quarter, you need to look at the sales factor. Well, that's the only factor you need to look.

didibus

What if the selling point wasn't how pretty the UI is to it's buyer? Maybe people buy Samsung because it has good ad campaigns, it sports a very impressive to glance at display, the design of the phone is attractive, the camera takes very good pictures, the sound in calls is very adequate, the battery can be replaced, you can add in a MicroSD card, Touch Wiz add some nice features, etc. It can still be ugly, and improving the theme's look would most likely help to sell even more phones.

hot_spare

There are 2 companies that are big follower of skeuomorphic design language. Apple and Samsung. Both sells the highest number of phones. An argument can be made that people like it. Only the people who sell it can give you exact answer. None of us have done a large and detailed market survey to prove otherwise.

What might look ugly to you, might look "colourful" to someone else. If you can prove that using clean lines of stock Android will sell more, I am sure they will change it in 5 mins. But until that point, I don't see Samsung changing any bit of that. And that shouldn't be a cause for concern either. You are free to choose a Nexus or other phone of your choice running Android.

didibus

I understand your point. It's a business decision that higher ups are often faced to make. Should we change the winning formula? The thing is, even for Samsung, it's almost impossible to know if the UI is a selling point or not, and to what degree. I trust Samsung will decide for themselves, but personally, I believe more often then not, when competition is fierce, companies fail in the long term when they are too conservative with their winning formula. As others copy the formula, they'll need to come up with the next wining formula. Personally, I feel improvement on the UI side would improve their formula, but like you said, it's very hard to know, even Samsung most likely does not.

http://www.thepixelpuse.com/ Aj Meadows

So you're implying that if Samsung were to update TW beyond the 2.x aesthetic, they wouldn't sell any phones? I find that hard to believe. I think Samsung can make their UI more attractive and be just fine in the money-printing department.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1653571802 Debadatta Bose

The ON-OFF toggles keep getting uglier.

fixxmyhead

how? the on-off toggles are JB styled just different colors. if your talking about the icons on the left there they look the same as the s3 ones there just in a grey background so there really the same not uglier

io53

They are not JB toggles. Look again. It's samsungs own poor design.
I'm just waiting for the release when they will start using Comic Sans.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000003999549 Mike Harris

Isn't that already an option? My sister-in-law has a stock S3 and her screenshots look hideous with the Comic Sans font.

fixxmyhead

im looking at my nexus 4 and the actual on-off toggle is the same as stock JB just a tiny bit shorter. the ics ones used to have that kinda slanted toggle. if u mean the ones on the left of course there not the same as stock but the actuall toggle toggle is jb styled

http://twitter.com/wehavetogobackk Enes Taşdemir

I actually like the theme

Richard Yarrell

Clearly Samsung has NOTHING TO PROVE TO ANYONE. They are the industry leaders the manufacturer who just sold 213 million smartphones in 2012 with 40% of the current market share. Clearly Samsung owners are fine with the overall build quality of their products and guess what those customers will be purchasing the Galaxy S4 and Galaxy Note 3 without fail. The sad part is you can take Htc, Lg, Sony, and Motorola as well as the Nexus line add up all their sales and market share and they would NEVER add up to Samsung. Whoever hates Samsung my advice to you is to step to the left and keep purchasing the current crappy products you have been buying. Because if your not purchasing products made by Samsung then your not properly in the tech game as you should be. Bottom line Samsung is android plain and simple.

nsnsmj

What is with Samsung and their love for those ugly Android 2.x designs and aesthetics?

bungadudu

I think you can.. descramble the scrambled text... if you look closely...
In the ram section it likely says 1.79... with 1.35.. free..

kane

How about the resolution of 1080x1920?

http://twitter.com/krismo5 krismo

That's how the resolution of phones is technically read.

Also, 480 PPI? So is it a 4.7" phone then?

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001016188235 Sahib Singh

The setting menu looks ugly

http://www.anivision.org/ Christopher Bailey (Xcom923)

at this rate I don't think anything will be a surprise at the event.

http://profiles.google.com/pbooker117 Phillip Booker

Just give us the hardware Samsung.....XDA will give us the software

hot_spare

Total XDA accounts - 4,932,161 (say 5 million)

Total smartphones sold by Samsung 213 million (or 205 million according to Gartner).

Difference = Roughly 200 million.

Who is going to maintain and install the software in those 200 million phones?

Guest

YO MAMA......BOOM!! o/ jk jk

http://www.facebook.com/krzysztof.gicala Krzysztof Gicala

Lol, yea there is a difference in numbers but on xda there are 5 million different accounts right? Samsung doesn't make 205 million different phones.

RajivSK

Wouldn't count on it actually.. I believe we're still waiting for the exynos sources. I am eagerly awaiting the S4 since i'm already up for renewal, but it has to be a lot better than the experia z for it to make up for the lack of proper roms.

power_pizza

I'm a fan of Samsung's hardware but I wish they would stop cramming gimmicks into their software. I turned off 90% of the 'smart' actions a month after I got the S3. Most of them just plain didn't work right. S-voice was an atrocity and stock Android has surpassed them in UI design.

But what do I know? Samsung is going to sell 50 M of these things right?

On that 2nd screenshot, there seems to be a floating menu symbol on the left side of the screen.. is that an existing feature of Samsung Galaxy phones... or is that an indication of on-screen buttons?

silaslenz

I would guess they use hardware buttons, but multitasking instead of menu. And this button shows up in old apps, like this one probably is....

Jaime Larios

It looks a lot like the Multiwindow button. It let you have 2 apps open on the screen at the same time, but right now it's a blue button, this one is translucent.

Lien Wee Hoo

That is multi-window button. They will never ditch away hardware button.

didibus

If google adds more features to the on-screen button, they might be forced to switch to them eventually. But that might never happen, so...

Naylo44

That's probably less than a 5inch screen because the usual DPI of a 1080P 5 inch screen is of 440-441 and this cellphone has 480 of density DPI...

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000003999549 Mike Harris

Did you miss the screenshot that says "Estimated Screen Size: 5.01 in / 127.25 mm?"

Freak4Dell

And what he's saying is that the estimate is probably wrong, because the DPI value does not add up. It could also be that the DPI is wrong.

Lord_Data

Note "SD Storage" is distinct from "Internal Storage"... hopefully this means a top tier phone that goes back to including an infinitely useful microSD card.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000003999549 Mike Harris

Not sure what you mean "goes back" when the S3 uses a microSD card, but I'm also glad to see they're keeping it in for the S4.

http://www.facebook.com/farisfitri2303 Faris Fitri

The Xperia Z and ZL has microSD slots as well.

TylerChappell

I just wanna see how the camera performs compared to HTC's new ultrapixel.

ssj4Gogeta

I really wish more manufacturers would take HTC's route and go for quality instead of bogus metrics such as megapixels just because they're easily marketable.

Steve Sy

No delicious octacore.

http://www.facebook.com/duckofdeath Hans Pedersen

I guess the system can only see 4 cores at the time. the ARM v7 cores are apparently the ones used when it's not under load.

didibus

To the system, it is a quad-core. The cpu is responsible for deciding which core is active and which is not. So the 4 extra cores are abstracted away from the OS, the OS just sees 4 cores. Is what I think at least.

spacekobra

Its not octacore.
Its big.LITTLE

Only 4 cores are active at once.

ssj4Gogeta

Besides, no current application would benefit from 8 cores. Less cores with better throughput per core are better for performance for most uses.

Steve Sy

Well of course. Does anything currently support quad core? If all S4 variants came with octacore would you complain?

spacekobra

I would actually, it's a waste of power. More cores don't always use less power. Hence why big.LITTLE exists. Low power cores are on when you don't need a powerhouse, then high power cores kick in when needed.

didibus

It is called Octa though.

spacekobra

That was buzzwording. But I see your point. :p

http://www.facebook.com/farisfitri2303 Faris Fitri

Samsung would win the award for ugliest UI with this. HTC's Sense 5 and Sony's UI look much better,just below stock Android IMO And why does Samsung like to add so many useless gimmicks to their firmware?.

mauric

Well I don't think it's worse than LG yet.

http://twitter.com/mcmadz Madz™

what with all the notifications?

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000003999549 Mike Harris

The notification portion of the notification bar isn't even that bad. It's the standard icons on the right side that are out of control, leaving almost no room for notifications.

All the more reason for a custom ROM.

anzensepp1987

Great to see the ICS-searchbar... Why not to add some GB-flavor as well? Honestly, TouchWiz looks crappy as always...

http://twitter.com/ithehappy Saurav Ghosh

Plastic?

didibus

Probably, but front is apparently Gorilla glass 3

Shake and Bake

From 12:27 to 12:38 the battery only increased by 1%, screenshot was taken at the same time on the battery icon charging position, and 5 bars the whole time.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000003999549 Mike Harris

I think your times are a little messed up (I don't see a 12:38 anywhere), but you have a good point. Of course, we have no idea if it was plugged in the whole time between screenshots (even though it seems likely). We also don't know how it's plugged in... it could be connected to a computer, which means more charging time.

Being an optimist, I'd like to think this means we're getting a huge, powerful battery that – naturally – takes a long time to charge buts lasts a really long time too.

Tomi Golob

Hmm...more megapixels for such a small sensor can produce more image noise (someone on this site said that).Let's hope this doesn't happen

fixxmyhead

if this is true and they go with a removeable battery and sd slot HTC is gonna get slaughtered

mauric

The size of the notification bar on the first screen looks awkward.

PhineasJW

It might just be me, but automatic scrolling feels like a gimmick and will probably get annoying very quickly.

Just because I'm looking at the screen, doesn't mean I want it to scroll. Nor do I necessarily want to be forced to read text *while it's scrolling*.

The other new features seem more useful.

W1sh

You can chose which apps this happens for etc. It's very customizable looking at other screenshots of it. So you could only have it on apps where you know you will need to scroll.

John O’Connor

ummm... quick google search...

a 4.8" 1920x1080 screen = 480dpi

Is this incorrect?

fox

Have you people looked at the person that have a Samsung device and noticed that they lack the eye for refinement? No? well then observe that, people that buy a Samsung phone just don't feel the need to be different, they have "horse vision" or tunnel vision, is more like buying a stock car not caring what they buy and how that car fit's there personality and when they reach a red light a dozen cars from the same kind are around it. That is how most of people buy things, not caring, not having a common sense, not having a taste of refinement and not having their own opinion.

Hey if you a great product you don't need to make an aggressive marketing propaganda. Look at Apple and hTC ... both their products are refined and build quality is top notch (i am referring to A5 and hTC ONE)...

O well i guess it's a matter of perception.

John O’Connor

So Samsung is not your cup of tea...

I don't see how this somehow makes the purchasers of its products somehow inferior to other consumers.